


Nightfall

by spinnd



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Hurt/Comfort, Interrogation, M/M, Pre-Canon, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-19
Updated: 2015-04-11
Packaged: 2018-03-18 15:20:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 12,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3574493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spinnd/pseuds/spinnd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"Best start talking, little spy. Once we're done breaking all your fingers, we might just start cutting them off." </i> </p><p>Harry/Merlin, torture, rescue, and shameless h/c. Completed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For Dressing Room 3 prompt: During a mission a couple of years prior to the events of the film, Merlin is captured and tortured with Harry back at HQ watching/istening on the computer. It goes on for days. Harry stages an unauthorised rescue mission, with the sounds of Merlin getting weaker in his ear the whole way.
> 
> For you, OP. Thank you for a great prompt!

* * *

  
_\- T minus 3 days -_  
  
  
White patch on the lower right half of his chest X ray is a bacterial pneumonia courtesy of getting thrust head first into a water tank in the dead of a Kazakh winter, and the doctor piles him with blue canisters and bitter pills and a standing order of two days' sick leave and a further two weeks behind a desk.  
  
He would have argued, except his first breath sticks against his ribs, and the second one, when he finally manages it, explodes out in a coughing fit.  
  
"Did you know pneumonia is the leading cause of inpatient deaths in all hospitals?" Sheringham tells him as he is steered out the room.  
  
Into the backseat of a waiting Bentley. Merlin, eyes still fixed on the screen, barely shifts when their legs touch side-on.  
  
"Two days."  
  
Merlin nods; still doesn't look up. "And after?"  
  
"Two weeks."   
  
"Can't have you leaving a lung behind around in enemy territory."  
  
"That has almost never happened, in fact."  
  
The ride home is sixteen minutes and four seconds long, and he spends more than half of it making sure his trachea was not about to crawl out his throat.  
  
  
"Honey water," Merlin hands him the warm glass when he's finally burrowed under the covers. "I'll come by again later. Try not to die in the meantime."  
  
His smile hurts his sinuses. "Likewise."  
  
There is the barest sound of amusement. Merlin is already closing the door after himself.  
  
"As if."  
  


* * *

  
  
_\- T minus 1 day -_

  
  
It is a Monday morning in January, with a cold snap covering the roads in black ice and acrobatic drivers, and his dislike of London sleet is only won over by his current hatred of his bedroom walls.  
  
Back at the office a day early then, and Arthur is frowning at him the whole time, but at least Merlin is smiling when they meet outside the boardroom.  
  
"So you're the one who got the Mombasa detail."  
  
"Lancelot's been delayed in the Balkans. I leave tomorrow."  
  
His chuckle is more a wheeze. "Bring your bathers."  
  
"I'll be sure to."  
  
"Sunscreen."  
  
"Yes."  
  
"And sunglasses."  
  
My Transitions work fine." It is an age-old argument, with more nostalgia than actual substance. He tries to keep his smile.  
  
"Yes, well. Don't do anything I wouldn't."  
  
Ache in his chest that must be his right lobar infection, because he's not the worrying type, not really, and Merlin's just as well trained as the rest of them and is more than capable of fending for himself - he only gets the cushy desk job because he helped encrypt the entire Defense Department's mainframe when he was just a month out of Fettes.  
  
"This isn't my maiden voyage, Harry. I'll be home within the week." Merlin's tone is patient; on anyone else, he would have felt highly insulted.   
  
"I know."   
  
"Look in on Fritz for me? Walkies, if you have the time."   
  
"Whenever I'm not looking in on you." He hadn't told Merlin until now. If he is now stuck behind a screen until medical clearance, he may as well be stuck behind the one screen he actually wants to be watching. Arthur would approve - eventually.   
  
The laugh out of Merlin is genuinely tickled. "My very own guardian angel."


	2. Chapter 2

_\- Zero Sum -_

  
  
Long haul flight to Kenya and the heat must be, for now, a welcomed change. The screen blurs as Merlin walks out the airport terminal, and Harry chuckles at the low grumble breathed over the comms, the view dropping from sky to road to the cotton weave of a striped polo.  
  
Technological wizard that Merlin is, he still hadn't found a way to stop his glasses from fogging up.   
  
Their contact is short and slim, with a brilliant smile and a head of afro curls. She looks barely legal to be driving the car she picks him up in.   
  
"We've moved the meeting time earlier!" She chatters, more than filling in for the initial silence of the journey. "Boss says he'll close the deal earlier so he can catch Williams v Radwanska."  
  
"Am I - ah, I'm not too under-dressed? I hope... that he, Mr Josef, he won't mind?" Merlin's cluttering comes naturally, his current persona a throwback to his early teens; bespectacled and disfluent and subclinically OCD. Kingsman had helped rid him of all but one of those deficits.   
  
(Harry remembers betting against that same gangly Scottish boy making it to the end of first training week; remembers how he ended up owing Percival a tenner when the kid is instead recruited and promoted to Head of their Tech and Research Division, and how Percival still doesn't let him hear the end of it, the wanker.)  
  
The feed eventually settles for a view out the window of bypassing roads and fields, browned by sun and dust. Harry thinks it's as good a time as any to refill his cup of tea. Jane at Surveillance turns down his offer to help with hers.   
  
He's barely out the pantry when the comm squawks shrilly in his ear, and Jane is audibly hyperventilating.  
  
 _"Galahad, we've got a problem. A big fucking problem."_  
  
He makes it back in time to see the screen turn red as a headshot takes out the girl in the driver's seat. Then it is a tumbling world of metal and leather glimpsed through crimson streaks, all the while while a screeching grind shrieks over the speakers that is not quite enough to drown out the hissed-out curses.  
  
One last groan of metal, and the spinning stops. Sleeve swiping across the screen, smearing, does little to improve visibility. Hand punching through an already-shattered pane of glass, and draws back with bloodied knuckles. Same hand pulling at dry dirt, then the feed goes white for a second in the flare of sun.   
  
Exposure stabilises; aperture adjusted. The focus is still off, and he can only see the silhouettes of the five men advancing.  
  
Then the first one drops with a rock embedded in his forehead, and someone in the distance gives a yell. It is gunfire and swinging fists and panicked Swahili from here.   
  
Despite the motion blur, Harry sees Merlin take down the other four - _knife, knife, chokehold, taser_ \- and retrieve the dropped firearms when more arrive to take their place. The gun from the first dead man is half empty; Merlin runs through it in no time, then launches himself at the closest man, grabbing the smaller body as a shield and managing to stop all the shots save the one that exited with enough velocity to score a rip in his thigh.   
  
Merlin finds two more guns to take out the rest of the backup. Seven down in ten minutes, and the dust is barely settling on the bodies, a swirl of motes and zigzagging particulates clogging the air around them. Merlin coughs, clearing his throat. Spits blood.  
  
"Merlin?" Harry finds his voice, breathing shallow and too fast and his lungs complain at him painfully.  
  
"Yeah," his friend says. Takes a glance around him. "Big welcome party. Seven to one is pretty shite odds, even by my standards."  
  
 _Seven?_  Harry tries to remember.  _Or eight?_  
  
A rifle butt appears out of the corner of the view, and a sharp gasp of pain follows.   
  
Then it is road, dirt road that is bumpy and blurred, scuffed shoes and a strong pair of hands, boot of a car opening above worn tyres. A hollowing thunk. Then black.  
  
Silence in the room, until Jane reaches for the receiver.  
  
"Sir, this is Watchtower.   
  
"They've got our wizard."  
  
Harry doesn't move.


	3. Chapter 3

_\- Day 1 -_

  
  
The visual feed has been picking up blurred images for the past hour, but now a hand comes into view and they watch it pull Merlin's chin up, up into the face of a man hidden behind a wound of cloth.  
  
"You are British," the man says, but even with the headdress, there is no mistaking the colour of his eyes, his pale skin, his old boy public school posturing.   
  
"You're British too," Merlin counters, rhotic slurring around a swollen lip, and that is all he says. For the next day, for the next dozen set of questions, asked in different voices, in the confines of four grey walls, in the light of a single hanging bulb.  
  
"You're British," he says, still says even when a fist eventually sends his chair toppling over and the glasses are smashed from his face.  
  
The screen goes rainbowed static, then grey, then black.  
  
There is only the mic implanted in his mastoid bone left now, all other devices having been stripped and destroyed, and there is then only silence in the HQ as the sounds continue to filter in, hard smacks against flesh, clang of a metal rod, air sibilantly strained through clenched teeth.   
  
Harry stays with the blank screen for another five hours before his watch beeps a reminder to take his meds.  
  
This is the first day.

* * *

  
  
_\- Day 2 -_

  
They had started with the standard questions. Today, they've moved on to more specific ones.   
  
"Are you with Six? Black Ops? SAS?"   
  
Those kinds of specific. It is enough to have HQ mobilise two teams to pull all their intel on British citizens with suspected involvement in overseas terror organisations. The lines are red hot with calls to and from GCHQ and Vauxhall Cross, and there are three officers at any one time working round the clock processing the last 24 hours of recorded footage.   
  
All well and good except one, no one's got a lock on Merlin's whereabouts since his last known location; two, no one's gotten anywhere with the facial recognition setup for their British UNSUB.  
  
And three: Harry Hart is still fucking stuck in this fucking cubicle, listening to his friend get five fucking kinds of shit kicked out of him.   
  
Merlin's gone silent now. Not like those spy movies, with their protagonist quips of witticisms and bravado, and injuries that heal quickly and bleed prettily. No laughs and martinis in the face of danger here; not least because Merlin absolutely loathes vermouth.  
  
He is silent because he is, even on good days, not much of a talker (and today definitely does not count as a good day), preferring to let his hands - or eyebrows - do the work for him; Harry knows him, his sort, who mingles for social requirements but likes his data matrices better, and if given a choice, would much rather share his space in a comfortable quiet where company counts and talk is secondary.  
  
Also, he is a stubborn pain in the arse, and it'll take more than a beating or three to change that.   
  
There is a knock on a heavy metal door that stops the punches raining down. Thump of boot heels fading away, to the hitch of a latch, and a curt inquiry issues from a familar voice.  
  
"Anything?"  
  
"No, sir."  
  
"What about earlier, with Suma?"  
  
"He got nothing either."  
  
Merlin coughs, once, ugly and wet.  
  
"Continue," the man says after a considered hum, RP crisp and wielded like a shiv.  
  
The door closes, and the footsteps return.  
  
This is the second day.


	4. Chapter 4

_\- Day 3 -  
_

  
_"Best start talking, little spy. Once we're done breaking all your fingers, we might just start cutting them off."_  


This is the third day.  
  
The screams have tapered off under the snap of bones sharp amidst the rattling smash of something heavy against a metal top. The damage is calculated as it is brutal; no quick twists and clean breaks. This is deliberately uncouth, multiple fracture lines and maximised trauma and how much function could be regained after a prolonged healing is anyone's guess.   
  
Pain is a natural reaction, they'd be taught from the start. Don't fight it, don't be afraid to show it. Cut, and one bleeds. Burn, and one blisters. Hurt, and one screams. The trick is to let out the pain, but never let it in.   
  
Easier said than done. Easier taught than witnessed.   
  
Easier borne than to sit by and let someone else bear it, alone.  
  
They stop at four, for some reason. Merlin fights back a groan as he is dragged away, back into what must be his cell, and the door shuts and a lock turns, and Harry hears that all Merlin can hear is the sound of his own ragged breathing.   
  
It takes him an hour to wrangle Arthur into their meeting room, sitting the older man down.  
  
"Get him out. Now."   
  
"We are trying our best, Harry. The alert has already been sent out to the others."  
  
"How much longer?"  
  
"Tristan's in Harare, but the situation is too unstable at the moment to transfer him. Lancelot's due back in 24 hours, if he makes it to the pickup point. Percival's still in the blackout zone. Our other NOCs cannot afford to blow their covers, not with the intel they're presently gathering."  
  
"That leaves no one, essentially. Except me."  
  
"You, who can currently make it up two flights of stairs before you need your inhaler."   
  
_"What do you suggest then!"_ Harry's never raised his voice at work. And never, never, at Arthur.   
  
He swallows. "How long before they - _(kill him)_  - break him?"  
  
Arthur studies him, and his scrutiny is nothing other than cold reasoning.   
  
"He is a Kingsman. He will tell them nothing."  
  
_Of course. That's what he's afraid of._  
  
Arthur is first to leave, and places a hand on his shoulder as he does.   
  
"We will get him back."   
  
And Harry thinks, yes, yes they will get him back, even as he settles back in front of the monitor and listens to how the breaths have now choked around little whimpers. The feed is one way, made solely for recording intel and not communicating, but that knowledge only making him want to talk faster, louder - scream, if he must.  
  
Hold on, he wants to say to the blank screen. Merlin, hold on, we're coming.  
  
Instead he shutters his teeth, flinching at the sound of a key in the lock, and Merlin's short strangled groan.   
  
"Will you talk?" Accented, harsh with impatience, brimming with violence.  
  
Breath. Then another.  
  
"Fuck off."  
  
A boot slams into fragile bones, and the feed dissolves into a wall of pain.


	5. Chapter 5

_\- Day 4 -_

  
Fourth hour of the fourth day, and a young tech barrels through the glass door, too flustered to be intimidated by Arthur's disapproving glare.  
  
"You'll want to see this, Sir."  
  
Harry is out the door before his superior is even out his chair, following the kid down the hall. "Show us."  
  
Screen up in the main hold and they are scrolling through frozen snapshot image, and Harry hates the suspense of it, the performing flourish of disclosure - thinks it must be a deliberate part of the training, and god he'll have to tell Merlin to correct his students' awful habits when he gets back.  _When_  he gets back.  
  
"Our toff?" Arthur says, but the tech shakes his head - no.  
  
"Adam Kilit." He says instead, and the blurred silhouette in the corner of the cell is zoomed in on, enlarged, noise wiped and pixels arranging to form the face of the Kenyan Deputy Defense Minister, looking on the interrogation from behind his steel rimmed glasses.  
  
Harry hears Arthur's curse, and knows.   
  
"You cannot go in all guns blazing, Galahad," Arthur tells him later in the empty boardroom. There are no others present to sit in on them, to look on with mild interest and bland sympathy. "This isn't some splinter cell or two-bit terror group that we can shut down and have everyone look the other way. We have bilateral ties, trade relations - this has to be handled sensitively. And if our Mombasa arms dealers are government sanctioned, if they have one of our own running British intel to them, we need to know more."  
  
"You're going to burn him."  
  
"I didn't say that, Harry." Arthur rarely shows emotion, preferring a cool facade when it came to handling emergencies. But there is a slight heaviness in his voice that hadn't been there before. "I want him back as much as you do."  
  
It's been twenty years, but he can still remember standing in this very room before a younger, darker-haired agent then code-signed Pellinore, grey eyes sharp as he welcomed them into the fold. Knight of the pureheart, and the Wizard in the high tower - Arthur's golden boys, both of them.  
  
Arthur watches him closely. "Six's Relations branch has a line to Kenyan Foreign Affairs. If we've spooked them, if they slip up, we'll know. Dig up some old dirt for leverage, trade our discretion for information about Merlin's whereabouts."  
  
_It's a long shot_ , are the unspoken words; but orders stand as orders go.  
  
Until he returns to Surveillance, mind tripping over half a conviction and a raging headache, and Jane's stricken look greets him there.  
  
The feed, he suddenly realises, is silent.

 

* * *

 

"What-" he barely makes out, when there is an explosion of noise, static harsh and pitched like a whine of metal against concrete, backed with a lapping splash of water over and out onto hard floor.  
  
Voices then, garbling, indistinct shouting, then cut through by:  
  
"- on his back! Turn him over!"  
  
Thumps heavy, sodden smacks measured and rhythmic and interspersed with pauses and panting breaths.  
  
It takes him inordinately long to make sense of the chaos over the feed.  
  
"Shit," British voice says, "get the oxygen kit, now."  
  
Just as Merlin gasps back to life, gagging and spitting up the water from his lungs, cries hoarse with near suffocation.  
  
Jane bursts into silent tears next to him and Harry knows, right at this moment, that he can't - he can't, not anymore.  
  
"No," he growls, even as his own throat tries to unclench from his sheer  _utter_ terror. "I'm not doing this."  
  
Not standing here, useless, helpless, listening on and doing nothing as one of their own dies within earshot. A Kingsman is first and foremost a gentleman. And a gentleman does not leave his friends behind.  
  
He retrieves his coat; makes sure his pills and MDI are safely in the pocket.  
  
"I need you to do me a favour, Jane," he says, and she nods in mute understanding; takes his glasses in trembling hands and patches him remotely into Merlin's audio feed.  
  
"Where?" She finally asks. "How will you find him?"  
  
He doesn't know. But it'll take more than that to stop him.  
  
"Don't tell Arthur," he tells her. As if he needed to.  
  
"I need you to do me a favour." He repeats, three times as he makes his way through the building. Once to Lakes, who loans him an unmarked car and points out a discrete exit out of HQ. Once more to Excalibur, whose access allows him into the armoury and whose login allows him to stock the necessary equipment without triggering any alarms.  
  
Once, lastly, to the tech in Command, pulling him to the side when he steps out of the hold.  
  
"Ph-Philips, sir," the boy stutters when he asks his name.  
  
"Philips." He hands him the chip from Jane. "I need you to keep me updated on your progress with the triangulations on Merlin's location. I'll be in Nairobi in twelve hours. Try and have something for me then."  
  
"I'll do my best, sir," the kid promises. Then, "you're going to bring Merlin back, sir?"  
  
"Yes," he says. Doesn't say  _I'll try_.


	6. Chapter 6

_\- Day 5 -_

 

The hot dust blows the hair back from his face as he steps through those same sliding doors, jet engine hums mingling with the noise of car horns and local chatter. The warmth settles into his lungs like sticky butter, makes him reach for his inhaler and draw two deep puffs, and the sun in his face is welcomed and sickening all at once.

Not as sickening though, as the mic snug in his ear, that had throughout his journey been on a continuous loop of sounds distressing and hateful.

The domestic leg between Nairobi and Mombasa had been the worst - crackling currents and aborted screams leaving his deep fingermarks in the seat cushion, which the old lady beside him had misconstrued as travel sickness and sympathetically handed him the paper bag. He smiled at her - smiled because, if not, he would have screamed.

"Jane?" He murmurs, and there is the faintest flicker on the screen before his eyes.

The map blinks a red dot centered over the location of Moi International.

"Merlin was headed northwest towards Garissa on the B8 when they were ambushed." Philips' voice comes over instead. "Pings were spotty after he got put in the car, but we've picked up two faint signatures from his tracker via a Chinese Telco satellite."

"Shoddy but better than nothing." Another voice that is unfamiliar, but Harry is reassured when Philips gives an affirmative grunt.

"His last known location is five hours out before the signal went dark; northwest, 200 klicks give or take." A third voice, young and female, and he knows his mission must no longer secret now, not with half of the Kingsman tech division hanging around the console and feeding all possible intel into his mic.

"Keep your video feed up," Jane's voice says, after she's chased away her junior staff. "If we find a visual match for his location, we'll flag you."

"Appreciate it," Harry confirms.

"And Galahad?"

"Yes?"

She inhales slowly. "Arthur says be careful."

He smiles wryly at that. "I'll try not to make a mess."

The rental car lots are bypassed with nary a glance, and he instead heads to the little enclave of rundown touts clustered by the road shoulder, the drivers looking up expectantly at his promise of business.

He pays one of them for a taxi, in hard cash - more than what he'd earn in a couple of years, most likely, and so more than enough for the man to give up his car with a winning smile and a waving thumbs-up. The tank is less than three-quarters full, the airconditioning is broke, and the gearbox is clunky, but he has four hours of driving at least and the hours cannot pass quickly enough.

His coat comes off, dumped onto the seat beside him, and his foot never leaves off the accelerator as he navigates onto the highway.

 

* * *

 

The screen alternates between his route map and the occasional landscape snapshot as the techs back in HQ scramble to pull their files and keep him on track. Coast to his right, several small town centres cut through by main road, a hill range to his left round the bend, before breaking into inland brush and scrub for miles and miles ahead.

  
When there is no need for directions or instructions, however, they leave their channel on mute, and leave him with the sound of Merlin's shallow breaths gasping in his ear.   
  
_Hold on, Merlin._ He grits his teeth and tightens his fingers on the wheel.  
  
Four hours pass just so, when the door lock clangs open and a bursting rattle of local dialect sounds over the feed. Merlin's breath hitches, a small noise as he struggles to get - up? away?- followed by a sharp slap, then the rough rasping of cloth as he is dragged bodily across the floor, the voices still harsh and jarring and indecipherable.  
  
Until the comm channel switches several minutes later, and Philips' panic is loud and clear in his ear.   
  
"They mean to execute him."   
  
The car jumps under him as his grip swerves the wheel too hard.   
  
"They gave the order, the boss," Philips continues. " _Fuck_. Sir, they -"  
  
"What did they say?" He keeps his voice low, times his breaths in his head. "Philips, what exactly did Linguistics translate?"  
  
The kid blows a trembling breath, and papers rustle in his hand. "Ah, the guards, they got orders. 'Take him to the boss. He'll finish it today.' And, uh, 'Quickly, don't keep the White Man waiting.'   
  
" 'Put him out of his misery.'  
  
" 'About time.' "  
  
A cold weight that settles in his belly, but he keeps his eyes on the road, feels the sun beating down in his face through the windshield, the hot rush of air gusting around his ears.   
  
"How much further?" He asks.   
  
"Forty minutes to the last signal ping." A grainy video loop of an abandoned house is pulled up, a jumpy sequence of of crumbling brick and whirling dust, before a sack is pulled over the view. "This is the last exterior recording we got, before we lost his signal."  
  
It's a start. It will have to be. He has one chance at this, and Harry prays that it'll be one chance enough.

 

* * *

 

The car dies on him five miles from the intended location when the engine overheats, and Harry doesn't even think before he's out the car in a flat sprint. The sun is just dipping into its evening spot, stretching his shadow long into the brown dust behind him.

  
"Turn off, here," Jane's voice is back in his ear now, and he veers off the main track onto a beaten-out path, the ground rocky and uneven beneath his Oxfords as the heels drum out a frantic pace, guns rattling in their holsters, but louder is his panting, straining breaths in and out, and the ache in his right chest is flaring uncomfortably tight.   
  
His meds are in his coat. His coat is in the car.   
  
He pushes on.  
  
When the building comes into view he nearly staggers with relief, dizzy with the lack of oxygen in his screaming lungs, and he thinks nothing more of stumbling through the doorway, the cool interior heavenly on his scorched skin when he makes it through. The world dims for a moment as he gulps mouthfuls of air, then slowly returns with a greyish tint as he opens his eyes again.  
  
Bare walls and floor greet him, and his throat tightens again.  
  
"Can you get me anything, Jane?" He says. Frowns, when no answer comes over the comms. "Jane?"   
  
He taps the mic in his ear, and tries again.   
  
Or tries to try. Doesn't get to, as the floor opens up beneath him and he tumbles down into the dark.

 


	7. Chapter 7

The shaft is a long sliding drop, the slight incline barely enough to slow his descent and he hits the end of it with a roll, sheer instinct curling him into a ball as he skids across a metal floor and slams his back into the far wall.  
  
He is on his feet fast, but the guns in his face are cocked and readied faster. The mic in his ear is silent, and the visual screen of his glasses is blank save for the small recording light on red. He's on his own now.  
  
"Easy, gentlemen," he says through hard breaths, hands slowly lifting up in a show of surrender. "Let's not be too hasty."  
  
"Shut up," one of them says, gun leveled at his throat. Turns to the men beside him. "Take him."  
  
Two move forward, the others hang back. Seven, he counts. He can do seven.  
  
The man who grabs his left wrist goes down with a yell when he activates the taser, and it starts the guns spitting muzzle flash and bullets above his head as he tackles the other man, sending them straight into the thick of the group. He has no need for his own gun at these close quarters; uses the men's own firearms back at themselves, and lets the haphazard shooting do the rest.  
  
There is blood hot and spattered on his cheek, and the knees of his trousers are soaked when he gets up unsteadily and no one else does.  
  
The sound of the gunfight brings reinforcements, boots clumping in the hallway, and he does not wait for them to arrive. Despite the warning tingle in his hands and feet, and his too shallow pants, he grabs a discarded rifle and charges round the bend.   
  
It is experience and training and possibly a fair amount of luck that keeps him alive, as the air sizzles with gunfire and his own blood pounds in his ears, but his focus is sharp and sure and only one thing matters now. One purpose. One person.   
  
_One_ , he counts, clinically, coldly, as red holes blossom and lips open in foreign screams.  _Two. Three-four-five._    
  
A bullet skims along his side and he empties the rest of his clip into the owner of said gun. His distraction earns a slice of pain along his calf, and a body hurled into his that he swings around, arms around a wiry neck that collapses with a snap, and then Harry Hart stops counting, and stops thinking.  
  
He staggers past all the bodies to the end of the hallway, and there is one last bullet for one last man, who falls with a gurgling howl, hands clutched just under his right breast. He drops to his knees beside the guard, and sees that he is still breathing  
  
"Where-" he stops to breathe, forces the air down into his spasming chest, "where is he?"   
  
The man stares at him, blood bubbling from his nose and mouth.   
  
"Your prisoner. The British prisoner." Harry shakes him.  _"Where?"_  
  
The shout sends a wracking cough through his body, but still he can hear the man's dying whisper.  
  
_"Too late."_

 

* * *

 

He's stopped saying it now, trying hard as he is to save his breath - whatever little that is left in his lungs, because he sure as hell is not getting anywhere enough - but it thrums in his head still, a monotonous cycling mantra that is part fear (that he knows speaks of denial), part rage (so hot he feels it burn the back of his eyes), and a tiny sputtering flare of ridiculous hope.  
__  
Not dead. Not dead. He can't be.  
  
No.  
  
The compound is a maze of tunnels and metal walls as he continues his blind search, every door holding a false promise when he opens and finds not what he's looking for. Comm terminals, dorm quarters, weapons and stockpiles. One he opens to a view of a cell with rust-stained floors and a pissbucket. In the corner - a bloody handprint on a grimy wall.   
  
"Merlin," he hisses, feeling the room spin slightly on an unnamed axis, and he closes his eyes as he steps back out of the cell.  
  
So he does not see until he turns around, until it is too late, until a two-by-four collides into his side and he  _feels_ the snap of bone within.  
  
He crashes to the floor silently, because he doesn't have the breath to scream, and the fire in his chest is threatening to swallow him whole.  
  
Hand in his collar that drags him - not far, just several yards down - and he is too busy fighting for air to fight the man who tosses him unceremoniously into the next room. He lands, face down and clawing at the ground. A boot in his back that then grinds down, and his vision whites out behind closed lids.  
  
A laugh from somewhere way above him, and the boot releases him. He sucks in air and dirt, coughs up more than he can breathe, and a small part of his brain is slowly but surely panicking.  
  
"Looks like the cavalry's arrived after all," the man says, still chuckling, and that voice sends his skin crawling with its crisp familiarity.   
  
He snaps open his eyes, and pushes himself up on shaking hands.  
  
"You." He snarls, blinking away the blurring spots as he gathers his feet under him; heaves himself upright with an effort, and makes further effort not to fall back down again.   
  
The man before him is not much older, blonde and fine-featured, clad in a simple Guernsey and navy blue slacks, SIG hanging lazily in his grip. (He puts his bet on Eton.)   
  
"Me?" The man smiles with his teeth. "I don't believe we've had the pleasure of an introduction. Unlike, your friend here."   
  
With a careless side step, he moves away and Merlin's body comes into full, ghastly view where he lays sprawled on his front beneath a hanging chain of manacles, their jaws gaping open and lined a wet red.   
  
"He wouldn't say a word," the man acknowledges, with a touch of admiration that made Harry's fists clench. "No matter what we did to him. Puts the boys at Hereford to shame - and a Scotch, at that. Tell me, what is it that is so important that you're both willing to die for it?"  
  
He smiles, and tastes blood on his lip. "Not falling for that trick, my good man."  
  
"Hmm." The man shrugs. "Shame."   
  
At the same time the gun swings around, he barrels into the man with enough force to send it skittering and both of them over to the other end of the room.

 

* * *

 

 It is a blur. They always say that about fighting, that it is messy and chaotic and when you're running on adrenaline and tripwire reactions, there's no time for remembering - just registering, reacting, responding. But that's a lie - you remember, when you take a life, when someone goes limp in your arms, when someone's blood hits you in the face, leaving still-warm tracks and a sharp coppery tang in the air.

  
Harry remembers all his fights. His first, his second, one in a museum in La Paz, one under the Hammersmith flyover. The one last year in Sana'a, the one last week in Stepnogorsk. This one he's just fought to get into a munitions cache some miles away from a Kenyan beach locale.   
  
This time, however, he is unarmed and injured and fighting a man who seems to know the counter to every of his moves, blocks and parries smoothly in contrast to his waning, weakening blows, and to top it all off, his friend is lying not ten metres from him and he still can't tell if he is or isn't breathing.  
  
Suffice to say, he's a little distracted, and not really interested in remembering right now.   
  
He knows he is slowing, can see before he feels the blow to the head that takes him off his feet, and he scrambles away, stamping his heel and swiping out the poisoned blade that his counterpart evades neatly.  
  
"Always with the fancy gadgets," the man tuts, before picking up the single chair in the room and hurling it at him, and the wooden frame splinters on the elbow he brings up to protect his face. "Never understood spooks."  
  
"Less talk," he hears himself spit, and charges forward, fist back and swinging out. The next time he tries to bring the man down with another tackle, he gets flipped into a wall. Hits his head hard enough that for the next few seconds, he sees and hears nothing.   
  
His vision comes back first - to the sight of a barrel of a gun just above his forehead. The man smiles down at him once more.  
  
"Nothing personal," He hears over the ringing in his ears. "But you had your kill order for my superior, and I have my job to make sure that doesn't happen. Obeying directives; you understand."  
  
_Just one doll inside another, inside another._  
  
The split second of the aim stretches, time running through amber, and Harry can only hope that if Merlin is dead already, it means he is no longer suffering.   
  
But the gun never goes off.   
  
The blonde man crumples to the ground, the wooden chair leg in his neck staining his sweater red, and Merlin is standing behind him, clothes hanging in tatters and half his face unrecognisably bruised, and he could weep at the sight of his friend, there, alive.   
  
Merlin takes one step towards him, and goes down.  
  
The door slams open, and Harry just has enough strength to roll over, grab the fallen gun, and point it up, straight up, into the face of -  
  
_"James."_  
  
Lancelot looks down at him, then over at Merlin, and breathes a sigh of relief.   
  
"You two are a fucking mess."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _We could play Spot the Spooks/MI-5 reference for a quicker update, aye._


	8. Chapter 8

_\- Day 6 -_

 

The hours slide into the sixth day like this:

Propped against the wall, one hand pressed to his chest as if it would hold in the shaking that's about to spill over his fingers, and he begs James:  "Help him -"

"I know, Galahad, calm down before you hurt yourself further, you cock." 

Merlin lying, curled on his side, and Lancelot kneels, carefully, hand out but not touching yet. Not until Merlin moves, just the slightest tilt of his head, that Lancelot finally lays one hand on a bloodied arm, the other pulling the injured man to him.

"Merlin. It's all right, mate, you're all right."

Over the pain of grating ribs, he watches Merlin burrow close into his first friendly touch in days, shoulders hitching, and hears Lancelot hushing him with a quiet word. Notices Merlin's grasping at the sleek black of Lancelot's flight suit, holding on like a lifeline, fingers curling in a weak, deformed grip, and the sight makes a cold rage spark anew in him. 

"We need to move." Lancelot says, serious as he's ever heard the younger man. "They may have already called for backup." 

His agreement is not shared by his body; whatever that's broken inside makes their displeasure known, loudly, and the tingling numbness is starting up in his hands again. James is on his feet first despite the added weight he's carrying, backpack slung on one shoulder and Merlin heavy and half-conscious against the other, and regards his unstable attempts to stand with a frown.

"I'll be fine." He can't feel his lips. "Get him out of here."

The stairwell up is daunting, the last ladder climb even more so, but they hit the top eventually and clamber out into the arid night. The cold burns straight through his lungs and he's gasping thinly as he helps pull Merlin's trembling form out the shaft. The screen behind his glasses flickers, the image intensifier kicking in and a monochrome veil comes down over the lens, lighting the surroundings in ghostly green.

His earpiece explodes suddenly in a roar of chatter, and he hears Lancelot's curse as his comm similiarly comes to life.

"- back on our monitors. Galahad? Lancelot? We have you back on our screens."

"Pick up?" He hears Lancelot ask, hears the snap of the safety coming off a Browning as the other agent scans the darkness of the perimeter. "Location and ETA?"

" _Charette 1_ radioed some of our boys over at Laikipia for a favour on his return. Your rendezvous point is tagged at ten miles due north at a hill rise just off the main track; they'll send a light transport once Arthur's cleared the logs with the Head Crab." 

"Let's hope they don't get stuck into one of their pudding raves again." The usual Lancelot drawl is back now, words cocksure despite the cut on his lower lip that's stiff with days-old healing. "We'll be there."

"Stay low. We're not picking up any unusual clusters of heat signatures, but you'll want to keep an eye out for any incoming hostiles."

"Or lions."

(It's only the rib fractures and Merlin's panting weight in his arms that stops him from smacking Lancelot upside the head.)

"Or lions," Lohengrin's voice acknowledges, Head of Signals and amused. "Oh, and Lancelot? Jezza says the next time you jump out of his plane without telling him first, he'll make sure to rig your chute."

He swears he can hear Lancelot's grin; makes a mental note to thank him later for flight path deviations and coercion of a pilot for an impromptu rescue mission. Right now, he shakes the shoulder currently digging into his sternum and he feels Merlin give a resigned exhale. No words, though - it's been days since Merlin last spoke - as he fights them their first steps forward, and only Lancelot swooping in with a quick arm saves them when Merlin's legs go out from under him.

This next part, he knows, will be slow-going. Slow-going, and painful.

 

* * *

 

Hours of stumbling over rocky desert ground pass like so: cold wind like teeth on his skin, Merlin between them and breathing harsh into his ear, his own side screaming at him to stop, Lancelot pushing them forward as the night drags on into a dark blue morning.

"Come on," James puffs, as Merlin's arm slips from his shoulder and their wizard careens dangerously towards the ground. "Keep up, old man." 

_Like he used to say when he lapped them both on the training track, grinning like the pup he was, and never finding out which one of them had slipped the laxative later into his afternoon tea._

The hill is small in the distance; grows taller and larger in tiny increments, and every step is a battle. Somehow Merlin is awake, conscious and lucid, for every one of them.

Harry almost wishes he isn't; if he would just pass out they could drag him, move him somehow, and James would put a shoulder out trying (he wouldn't do much better himself) but it might still be minutely better than seeing him like this - blood black in the sickly cast of the night vision filter and caked into pain lines deeply etched around his eyes, neck tendons tensed against labouring gasps, teeth clenched behind rictus lips and still hardly a sound passes between them.

Except the breathing. That sounds like drowning. That sounds exactly like he had when they had drowned him and brought him back to life again, and he swears he never wants to hear anything like that again - _not from Merlin, ever._  

"We have Sarras' confirmaton for pickup. ETA two hours twenty. They'll bring a medic with." HQ Comms chirps as they hit the halfway mark.

The hill looks even further away than before.

They stop once, maybe twice, when his side seizes and he couldn't extend his leg as much as he tried, but otherwise it is a relentless push, running for time and evasion, and by the time the sky is suffused pink with impending daylight, they've made it to the foothills.

"Almost there, chaps." Even Lancelot's pip sounds strained. "Galahad, cover us. Let's get this geezer up top and flag that cab."

Lancelot's gun snug in his grip, he teeters when Merlin's weight lifts off his shoulders before scrambling ahead to scout and sweep as fast as his burning chest would let him.

"Nothing on our sensors, Galahad," Surveillance confirms, but the prickling unease sits tight along his spine even as they eventually summit and Lancelot all but drops Merlin in his lap.

"Here, you stay awake for me" he says, when Lancelot move to unpack and assemble the mobile signal kit. Merlin's good eye blinks up at him, managing to look put-upon in spite of the tissue swelling and subconjunctival bleed. "I mean it. Thick skull or no, they really worked you over this time." 

The bruised lid lowers in concession, and he feels the breaths start to slow against where he's cradled his friend to him.

"I left Fritz with Igraine," he murmurs, apropos of nothing save keeping Merlin awake, grounded, sane. "I know you said not to the last time because she feeds him too much, but at least you'll have your dog to come home to when we get back. Even if he'll be more sausage than Schnauzer." 

He fights down a lump in his throat, and feels an answering flutter of lashes against his cheek. A hand comes up to find his own, and he looks down as Merlin makes an approximation of a smile.

 

* * *

 

The whirr of rotors comes in over the still dawn and a little chopper comes into view, white Agusta body gleaming in the early rays.

Lancelot spots it first, and shakes them awake where they had both dropped off, curled around each other - and his heart stutters for an instant when Merlin takes long to wake and longer to respond.

The chopper lands a safe distance from them at the other end of the plateau, and two jumpsuits are out and running towards them even before complete touch down.

"Him first," he wheezes, to which they comply and lift Merlin up between them. James hauls him towards and into the transport, and shuts his protests by hooking him up to the other rebreather mask. He sits back, almost giddy as his lungs blessedly fill. 

They strap Merlin to a pad next to him, and he watches the lines go in with their oxygen and fluids. Merlin, uncharacteristically, fights them.

"What's wrong?" Lancelot asks, as the evac chopper takes off.

Merlin twists with a small sharp inhale, face contorting. One hand reaches to clutch at the left shoulder.

"Hurts," Merlin grinds out from behind his mask, his first word laced with pain, and even taking his hand in his own does little to alleviate the discomfort that grows into clammy fingers and shallow breaths and a worryingly glazed look.

They make it back to the air base. Then the medic shouts as his patient's blood pressure crashes, and others come running to the shrill of the Code Blue.

The cold hand slips from his as they take him away.

Harry does not move.


	9. Chapter 9

_\- Day 7 -_

   
He sleeps through the advent of the seventh day.

Had succeeded in clinging to consciousness from when the surgeons scrambled into the Emergency, to when the OT doors slid shut with a hiss and the red No Entry light hung bright overhead. Then, another medical entourage surrounded him, putting him through tests and imaging and medications, and had, with Lancelot's help, dragged him away to a nearby room and manhandled him onto the bed.

"I'm right here. If I hear anything, I'll wake you." Lancelot had said.

"No." 

But the cough bursting out of him curled around his chest like a vice, nasal prongs tickling uncomfortably where they are strapped to his face, and he gratefully let the pillow take the weight of his throbbing head as he slumped back down after.

"No." But his lids had already slid shut to the feel of a sheet settling atop him lightly.

So it is, twelve hours and two surgical teams later, that the news arrives in the form of a young nurse, who waits by his bed until he comes around. Lancelot, draped over the visitor's couch, gets to his feet at his waking.

"We've moved your friend to critical care. He's serious, but stable." 

"I want to see him." He is hoarse enough that the words are not petulant; almost.

"They said you would." The young man nods as he nips out and returns with a wheelchair. 

"Behave yourself," Lancelot says, after the two-man transfer to get him seated amid the tangle of tubes, which he picks at irritably. "If you dislodge that cannula, they'll sedate you for a fortnight."

The ICU is a small setup in this military hospital, blindingly sterile and glaringly bright at three in the morning, but the curtains are drawn once they enter the cubicle to afford them a dim, quiet privacy, and it gives him time, and space, to fully take in the man in the bed before him. 

He's been in enough hospitals to know the very basics; sees his friend hooked up to lines and equipment altogether too familiar to be intimidating - oxygen, fluids, obs machines, surgical drains, all working in the tandem of supportive care. And under this web, patchworked with bandages and mottled skin, Merlin lies still and asleep and breathing.

"Lancelot." He does not turn around. "Give us a moment." 

Wheeled up to the right side, just about eye-level given the bed's mildly angled incline, and he slips a hand between the spaced rails to find the other's; strokes the cool skin, careful not to jostle the line passing through the right wrist.

"I'll see you in a week, you said." He watches his thumb skim the edge of the tape, feels the pulse thrum through skin and plastic even as the monitors trace his lifelines. He smiles, not bitterly, listening to the lone hum of the infusion pump in the room.

"I'll see you in a week," he says. "I'm holding you to that." 

Then his hand draws back, going up to his face, the other curling around his damaged side, as he fights unsuccessfully not to cry.

 

* * *

 

He'll take a while to come round, they tell him. When he does, he might still be a little out of it.

Be patient - the sage advice from Lancelot, of all people.

There is a small hopeful start when he visits the second time, Merlin opening his eyes in bleary slits and the gaze carrying a spark of recognition when he sees him before they slip shut again. Normal, the doctor tells him, throwing out words like _hypovolemia_ and  _parenchymal contusion_ and _post-operative sedation_ like they were supposed to mean something, like they were important to him, instead of words like _pulled through_ and  _awake_ and _alive_. 

There is a small scare when he wheels in the third time to a cluster of personnel outside the cubicle, but their patient is cognizant enough after vomiting up water and bile to answer questions (time, place, person) and obey commands (right hand up, now left) to alleviate worries of a worsening bleed in the brain. Still, everyone only breathes easier once the scan report comes through.

Told you you had a thick skull, he whispers after the crowd has dissipated, and thinks he sees a faint smile.

It is just past dinner - if one could call the slop on his plate such - when Lancelot comes through the door of his room, half-eaten mandazi in one hand and a mobile phone in the other, the gold-skinned Android bought off some Hong Kong street cart still a more discreet and mundane alternative to their comm sets now stripped off and hidden away.

"Galahad, you damned fool," Percival's voice is thick with relief.

"How's Merlin?" Asks Tristan.

"Arthur wants you back ASAP." The usually more aloof Constantine even comes to the phone to say.

"I leave with Merlin," he says in response, and means it.

Their deputy chief makes some noncommittal sound to that, but knows, and has heart enough, not to argue. 

"Get well soon," Constantine concedes flatly, and when he rings off to the sound of Tristan's clear laugh, even Harry has to grin.

"The boys send their well-wishes," he says later, seated in his wheelchair by the bed, watching Merlin struggle to keep his eyes open. "Constantine too."

Merlin's chuckle is a dry rasp. He spoons him an ice chip.

"Said Arthur wants me back soon. I told him to tell that Big Cheese to sod off - well, no, not exactly in those words," he corrects with a smile when Merlin's eyes widen, "but even George can't possibly misconstrue that sentiment. He'll distract Arthur somehow."

Merlin tries to turn to him. The action sending a spasm of pain across his face, and he leans forward instinctively, immediately sobered, but Merlin shakes his head, stopping him with his splinted left hand raised.

_You should go -_ his words are mixed; mouthed, whispered, breathed. The pharyngeal swelling from numerous chokeholds had yet to subside, and the ligature marks are still a vivid purple.

"Don't be ridiculous."

_I'll be fine._

"They had to cut you down the midline to remove your spleen. Transfused more than half your body's blood supply before they could stop the bleeding inside." He quotes the doctor verbatim; it keeps his voice steady. "They almost lost you on the table at one point."

He pauses, and can barely bring himself to say: "I almost lost you."

The green eyes watching him go soft, gently affectionate, as are the fingers clumsily brushing his cheek. Pale lips quirk out their words with a comforting wryness that is specially, only, his Merlin's.

_As if._

 


	10. Chapter 10

_\- After Hours -_

_  
_ The scar heals nicely where it runs vertically down Merlin's abdomen, and the drain is removed with little fuss, to their relief. Not as much relief, however, as when the catheter finally comes out when he's no longer pissing blood and has enough strength in his legs to make it to the bathroom without passing out on the linoleum of the Surgical ward. 

"Ugh _,_ " Merlin grumbles through his wince, but retains enough good humor to thank his nurse when she deposits him back in bed.  

"Wuss." Lancelot mocks from where he's standing, holdall in hand, an hour away from catching the next flight back to London with a departing squadron. 

"Yes, James, we'll see how well you do the next time they pull a rubber tube out of your cock." 

"Already planning your next New Year's party trick, 'ey Harry?" 

He wisely decides that his hard-won Arabica latte is not worth wasting on Lancelot's smirking mug, so he merely flips to the Sports section of the Kenyan  _Standard_. Studiously keeps on the page, and pretends not to overhear the whispered words of thanks when Lancelot drops his bags and pulls Merlin into a hug.

_"_ Anytime, old man," James murmurs, before pulling away. Comes to give him a hug as well that nearly upsets his breakfast tray, and ignores the indignant swat of the newspaper round the head. 

"Don't take too long. Camelot's all a-waiting for you two, and Arthur's insufferable when he's cranky."

The medical team is still leery of clearing the two of them for air travel, between Merlin's surgery and his own lung infection. His subsequent chest X-rays show bilateral patches now, and a minor miracle it is that the fights have not done significant internal damage. 

_"_ They're stable, they'll survive a medical transfer," Sheringham reasons over the phone with the senior medical officer. "Have a medic accompany them over; my team will receive them here, the sooner the better. You'll thank me when they start tearing up your hospital."

That evening, Merlin manages to tangle himself in his antibiotic line while trying to make a solo run for the bathroom. Impressively brings down a curtain rail with the IV pole, and then nearly brains himself on the bedrail.  

"We leave tomorrow," they announce the next morning, and Harry pretends to be surprised.

 

* * *

 

They land at Gatwick in the early hours of some fog-veiled morning, a non-descript civil ambulance whisking them straight to St Bart's, and all the while in the shared space of the vehicle, Sheringham is giving them an incredible stink-eye.

"No," he hears their Kingsman physician say once over the phone, presumably to Arthur or one of the other higher-ups. "They're staying, the both of them. I had let Mr Hart go on outpatient sick leave the last time, and we all know how that has turned out."

Funnily enough, the chief concedes. 

They could be forgiven for easing into the monotonous lull of their hospital stay after the first day back on British soil - hours of doing nothing but letting saline and amoxycillin drip into their veins, watching the local sports channels with their football replays and cricket highlights, checking out the nurses (Harry does, anyway). Merlin gets better, stronger. They both do, but the physio spends more than half his allotted time getting his patient of interest to shuffle down the hallways as often as possible ("as long as we don't rip his stitches!"), and for the most part said patient lets himself be subject to the rigours of rehab, albeit at times with as close to a sulk as Merlin could pull. 

Still, the shadows seem to be slowly disappearing from his eyes, even as the bruising goes down to a less garish yellow,  muddied colours furled across sharp features.

He's bullied the staff into letting them share a single room - not exactly; the staff had been more than willing to accede to his request, likely due to his own contribution and willingness to play nurse. He has a wealth of experience to draw on, and predicts each escapade from the hospital bed with glancing ease, his finger unerringly finding the call button to bring help round every time Merlin tries to flaunt the Fall and Safety Precautions.

"You'll thank me one day," he grins at Merlin's betrayed look. 

Arthur visits some time later, at an unannounced, unofficial visiting hour, when both of them are dozing after yet another grueling physio session.

"I wouldn't even feed that to Tennyson." Arthur finishes the pudding cup he's taken from the dinner tray with a grimace. 

"You're not supposed to give chocolate to cats, sir." He rolls to the side of his bed and sits up; watches Merlin do the same, except slower, and more gingerly. 

"Tell that to the missus." Arthur eyes them somewhat critically, though his face remains unflappably, characteristically, neutral. 

Sometimes, he thinks it takes a very special person to be an Arthur. Special, and not always in a good way.

"Overall," he eventually says, holding Merlin's intent gaze, "the mission was par for the course. And that's all you need to know for now."

"Sir-" Merlin croaks, but their Chief cuts him off.

"The weapons cache was shut down, the intel gathered will inform our subsequent directives, and Kenyan Internal Security has been alerted, with appropriate discretion. Minimal casualties on our end, even if two unauthorised missions within twenty-four hours has set a new department record." 

(The last thirty-two-hour record had been set by Lancelot and Percival, if he recalled correctly, and he still has the scars on his leg to prove it.)

"In light of recent events, however, a few changes will have to be made. Merlin - particularly. I understand Sheringham has already given you the brief."

He had. When his patient was no longer doped up on opioids and could keep his attention focused for longer than five minutes, Sheringham had sat him down with a neuro kit and half a dozen leaflets: Vaccinations. Post-Splenectomy Care. Pain Management. Traumatic Brain Injury. Vision Testing. Hand Rehabilitation. 

Harry had returned from his shower to see his friend valiantly squinting through his old pair of spectacles at the print on the pages; learned that Sheringham had also arranged an ophthalmology consult first thing the next morning, that vision problems were not all that uncommon in head injuries. 

Merlin nods, once. "Yes, sir."

"We've seconded Morgana from Tactical to run mission control for now. When you're back on light duties, come by my office. We'll talk more then.

"The same goes for you, Harry."

He'd be lying if he said he's looking forward to it, but says so anyway, and tops it off with a jaunty hat tip, sans hat.

Merlin, however, doesn't speak; not when Arthur leaves, not even when the nurses make their rounds before lights out, and they are left lying in the dark, listening to each other breathe. He remembers the sight of Merlin's jaw clenching tight as Arthur exits the room with nary a glance behind him, of how he shies so violently from touch that Harry decides that this would be one time he would have to leave him alone - for his own sanity, if nothing more. 

He is still awake when it is midnight dark and he hears the telltale rattle of bed frames, and a low stuttering moan.

" _Stop_." He also hears, and, " _please_." Then,  _"Harry._ "

"Harry!"

He near-hurdles the rail of his own bed, and reaches the opposite bunk in two steps where Merlin is fighting to sit up, sheets twisted around his legs, sucking air into a tight chest with wheezing gasps. The bed is hardly big enough for the both of them, but he squeezes in regardless, length of his body tight up against Merlin's back even as the younger man tries to hunch over and in on himself, only to stop short with a sharp cry of pain.

"Here, it's okay," he catches a stray pillow and presses it against the line of agony flaring down the stitches, "hold this, tight. Good. Head down. Head down, and breathe with me."

Head over Merlin's shoulder and they're cheek to cheek. Merlin's hands tremble where they rest on his atop the pillow, not so much pressing down as grasping, fingers searching until they finally intertwine with his.

Nearly a week into his return to them, and of course it would be a simple mission debrief that brings on the nightmares.

"I'm here." His words turn into a kiss along the strong jawline. "I'm right here." 

Merlin leans into the touch this time, his dominant hand comes up to cradle the head on his shoulder, but with the splint bulky and restrictive around his fingers, he only manages several awkward pats before he drops his hand with a frustrated snarl. Harry feels the tension wind itself back through his spine. 

"Bastard," he hears Merlin gasp between his breaths, the sound of it raw and wounded, and he pins the injured hand down before Merlin hurts himself further. "Fucking  _bastard_."

"Ssh. It's done, it's over. You killed him."

"I killed him."

He nods, hugging closer, tighter. "You did. Saved my life. You were barely standing, and yet you saved my life."

"Should have done it sooner," the words grate through clenched teeth like a rasp. "Should have - tried, before -"

_Before they broke his fingers, bone by bone, knowing somehow that he - was - left handed._

_Before his head hit the wall so hard he's still seeing double, two weeks later._

_Before the wooden bar struck into his side lacerated his spleen, the fallout leaving him with a compromised immunity, unfit for active duty, essentially grounded._

"You're alive," he murmurs, over and over, waiting for the stiff line of shoulder to ease down. "You're alive and that's all that matters, love."

When the stress finally bleeds from the rigid arch of bone and sinew, it is as he expects: not with a scream, but a quiet wrenching whimper.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On a more sober note: for all the disclaimers of fiction and coincidence, sometimes the world reminds us that some very real things do go on outside our stories. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the people of Kenya this Easter weekend.

 

\- _Sundown -_

  

He's climbing the walls by the weekend, even with Merlin to occupy half his waking worries, and finds himself back at Headquarters a week from February on Sheringham's medical leave, bundled in his thickest winter clothes despite the oddly sunny day. 

Philips trips over his own feet on seeing him come through the main doors, but the boy is by him in an instant, chattering excitedly, hand on his elbow in an invalid hold.

"Time and Arthur wait for no man," he explains, then reassures the kid and the sudden proliferation of tech nuts that have popped up around him in the mere minutes that Merlin's well, will be back as soon as he can, appreciates their concern and please no flowers, the last thing he needs is another allergy attack. 

He's well too, by the way, if anyone's asking. Jane pats his arm fondly, looking far too amused.

Arthur's office is quiet; the comm lines far less busy on this their traditional paperwork Monday, with only Gawain out on reconnaissance exchange with their cousins across the pond - in all likelihood swinging his way through the Ansonia, or whatever passed for American hospitality these days.

"Didn't do too much damage, did I?"

Arthur regards him over the stem of his pipe, and draws two deep puffs of newly lit tobacco. 

"The NIS had been running their own internal investigation for months about a possible opponent in the government ranks, running arms and planning terrorist activities right under their noses in efforts to destabilise the region. Of course, they've been tetchy about the northeast for years, with Al-Shabaab spilling over from the border. A wildfire waiting to happen, that they're trying to turn into a controlled burn."

Another draw, another exhalation of curling white smoke.

"Someone made a call to Six last month, who pointed them in our direction - didn't want this one on official Circus records. We complied, on the terms: mailfist, quick in-out, a favour between friends. We have a long history with our African boys. I went to school with their Security Advisor - Fitzwilliam College. Class of '51. But I don't suppose they thought this would go all the way to the top of their agency. Now they're sweeping up the pieces."

Arthur did always have a fondness for his connections. Likes talking about them even more. 

"What about our British merc?" He redirects.

"Professional gun-for-hire. Ex-SAS, who got involved in the arms trade. An all too familiar story."

"Seemed more than just SAS to me." 

Arthur pauses for the briefest moment. Then the screen behind him flickers, pulls up the gallery headshots of Kingsman hopefuls, dating back to the '70s; the adjacent screen flashes an enlarged cropped shot of the blonde interrogator from Harry's camfeed - slicked hair, smiling from behind his gun. Arthur's fingers hadn't moved from their place on the handrests. 

"Also a former Kingsman trainee. J. Samuel Weiss. Came in second in his year." 

He'd known, they all had, what could sometimes result from their training selection process. Still. It left a bad taste in his mouth.

"What happened?"

"He shot his dog. Thrice. Didn't even flinch." Arthur folds his hands. "We want spies, not murderers." 

"You mean you want a murderer you can control."

"Wouldn't you?" The blink settles into a stare. "They wiped him. For all our sakes."

There are several fates for rejected recruits, not all of them pretty. And sometimes, he grimaces inwardly, not entirely failproof either. Wipe the knowledge of the organisation from a person, but one would have a harder time removing honed instincts, or muscle memory. Or inborn sadistic traits.

"Merlin has a right to know." 

"He will." He imagines he hears a modicum of guilt in those words; it had been a hasty deal cut with inadequate planning and even shoddier intel, and it had almost cost them one of their own. "How is he?" 

"Giving the physios hell." He keeps his tone light. 

Arthur chuckles. "That's my boy."

 

* * *

 

It takes Merlin another week before he is summoned to HQ, and is allowed back in by medical decree. He swaps his Surveillance shift with Tom and by the time Merlin's released from the Inquisitor's maw, he's waiting for him in the lobby, the Lexus idling out front. 

"How did it go?"

"As well as expected. Nimue says I write like a dyspraxic."

"Well, you've only been right-handed for two weeks." 

"They want start field testing next Thursday, but she assures me it's all just formality."  

Merlin's left hand twitches in its splint, and he rubs out the cramp with a sigh. Harry catches sight of a smiley face drawn in Sharpie ink over the space of the palm. Merlin sees him looking down at it. 

"James," they echo simultaneously. 

He regards the other man; in the incandescent light of the chandelier, Merlin's features cast softer shadows, the last of the bruises fading under, and while he's still trying to put the weight back on since Mombasa, he's lost the stark gauntness of the early days at the air base hospital. 

"And the full debrief with Arthur?"

"First thing this morning." Merlin swallows, glancing around - not nervously, just observant of the other staff milling in the vicinity. He takes the cue, and heads out the door to the car, with Merlin a step right behind.

"And?" He asks, once they're belted in and the heater is blasting warm air through the vents.

Merlin leans back, still cautiously even now without the line of Prolene down his belly. "What do you want me to say, Harry? We know the dangers of our work well enough."

"We also sent you in essentially blind. And when was the last time you had to play scalphunter?" 

"Rawalpindi. '06." Merlin gives him a hard look. "I don't see how that has any bearing on the recent mission."

He refuses to let the tension peak; puts his foot easy on the pedal and trains his eyes forward on the road. 

"It doesn't. But if you hadn't noticed, our R&D division has grown three-fold since then. As have the prototypes in the stock depot. Arthur sequestered you to Tech for a reason, since the very beginning. I just -" he bites his lip and considers his words "- think we ought to manage our assets a little more carefully in the future."

He decides to take the left at the T-junction, to his place instead. Merlin, who notices, says nothing. Keeps silent until they ease out of the rush hour snarl.

"Morgana's permanently moved to Control; two Heads better than one, I believe were her words." 

"I've always said you could do with a little more help." And someone else to mind your meals, he adds silently.

"And I've been offered a new post on the ground."

"Oh?"

"Side project for now. Ector's been mentioning retirement for a while."

The thought is altogether too unexpected and uproarious. "You mean - training?" 

"We've only needed ops support personnel for the past fourteen years. If our luck holds, we won't have to recruit new blood for a few years yet." Merlin's voice flattens on the last bleak note. "But it wouldn't hurt to update the manual."

He is trying to hold in his laugh now. "You hated the training."

"At least I came through."

"Yes, only because Otto pulled you away before they tripped that mine."  

Merlin smiles at the memory, and he grins along with him. Mr Pickles had had a soft spot for that Doberman. Like dog, like owner - he supposes.

"Come in for a bit." He offers, as they pull up at his house.  

His friend is slow to emerge from the car. "I have to be home by half-seven. Igraine's coming round with Fritz." 

"Ah." He makes his way over to the front door. "I've been meaning to tell you. I took care of that too."  

He swings the door open to a sharp yap and a small grey ball of wiry fur. 

The look on Merlin's face is one of pure unadulterated joy. 


	12. Chapter 12

 

_\- Nightfall -_

  

By the time Gawain is back from Stateside secondround, there and back again for yet another pally information sharing session, Lancelot's survived a shootout in Mexico City, Tristan's been posted back to Harare - _"Arthur hates me, I can tell"_ -, Percival has taken compassionate leave for the passing of his mam, and Harry himself has been briefed on his first active mission back in the field in over a month. 

"Be nice. Remember, you're going as an honoured guest," Olwen had said, before making him choose the colour of his kippah to match his shawl. When James had hobbled through the shop to replace his lost cufflinks, he'd taken one look at Harry and nearly pissed himself laughing.

(He's biding his time until he can nick yet another laxative from Pellam's pharmaceutical vault.)

In this same time, Merlin's foisted himself back into HQ life, even if it did mean outfitting the room adjacent to Station Control with a few more amenities and emergency supplies. Morgana, true to her word, has taken the charge of his overall health and welfare very seriously, and he's pleased at how well they work together to hound Merlin on important matters of daily life. She's even managed to throw out the stash of frozen dinners, brave woman. Merlin had unfortunately not been as appreciative.

"I leave tonight." He pokes his head into the lab to say. "Don't wait up."

"I won't." Merlin barely looks up from where he's tinkering with a new pair of glasses; no doubt to assist some perimetry neglect or whatever visual deficits lingered from his last test reports. Pauses now and then to jot down the readings on the optics sheet next to him; right side of him, because even though his left hand is healed perfectly - more than perfectly, the doctor announces - he writes with his right now. A final Fuck You to his interrogators.

What doesn't kill you, he supposes. 

"Tuesday dinner?" He asks before he leaves.

"No promises," Merlin says, with a wry smirk that he himself returns.

Half a day later, he's looking into the mirror of the Hilton suite in Tel Aviv, adjusting his skullcap and glasses, when a voice sounds through the mic in his ear.

"Looking good, Galahad." 

He smiles at its familiar brogue. "Thank you, Merlin."

 

* * *

 

The screaming child in First Class had been enough to give him jet lag despite the short flight and near-negligble time difference, and he drowns his headache in a white pills and two fingers of single malt. Still, he decides, on touchdown in Heathrow, that he's headed over to Maida Vale instead of the Mews. Because he can, and because he wants to.

Four days away and he's pining already. Even if Merlin had been in his ear nearly the entire mission, translating real time, fluent Hebrew tripping off that silver tongue which he had parroted almost verbatim, in prayers or in conversation, and had only gone off comms once he was safely on board his BA flight. The silence in his mic had sat like a stone on his chest the whole way home.

He wonders idly at this sudden separation anxiety, as he alight from the cab. The house is dark in the quiet leafy street, and belatedly, he wonders if Merlin's even managed to make it home tonight. Chances are, some other emergency is currently underway that requires the tech hands on deck, and pulling consecutive all-nighters had always been the norm for their workaholic wizard. 

The lock turns under his key, security pad lighting green on his codes, and he remembers just in time to insert his tie clip into the door bell before the klaxon gets tripped. The last sentry standing issues a soft warning growl as he enters, but his cologne and hissed ' _tsch tsch'_  is enough to turn it into a small wuff of recognition. 

"Hallo, boy. Where's your silly human, then?" Fritz cocks his head, then sits back on his haunches, tongue lolling. "Never mind." 

There is light in the hall, however dimmed, as he makes his way in and the other light peeking out from under the study door is enough of a giveaway that Merlin at least made it home, even if he's still giving in to insomniac tendencies.   

Or - not quite. Only soft breathing and the sight of the Scot slumped over the papers strewn across his desk greet him when he pushes the door in. He feels himself give a silent hum, then pads over to where the man is currently pillowed by two volumes of the Kingsman Trainer's Manual. 

Merlin is jostled awake when he finally succeeds in removing his glasses from where they've imprinted grooves into his nose bridge.

"You're hardly getting any work done asleep."

The new Instructor gives a grudging grunt of agreement, closing the ring binder and returning it to the stack of other files on the shelf - arranges the papers neatly even when draped with six feet two inches of overaffectionate Englishman.

"Come on." He says, nuzzling into the warm neck of the sweater. "Let's go upstairs."

"-see." 

"Hmm?"

"Can't see." Merlin cranes his neck around and squints balefully. "Unlike you, Harry, I don't wear glasses as a fashion statement."

"If you stub your toe on the way, I promise I'll kiss it better." 

Merlin mumbles something sounding suspiciously like _"fetishist"_ , but regardless, follows his insistently tugging hand as he leads them from the study to the bedroom. Fritz, earlier returned and already curled at the foot of the bed, raises an eyebrow sleepily.

"You said Tuesday," Merlin comments as he wrestles clumsily (more clumsily than usual, anyway) out of his knitwear. 

"It's two in the morning. It is Tuesday." _Couldn't wait_ , he doesn't have to imply.

The shirts, trousers, socks and shoes are stripped unhurriedly, folded neatly or hung up. There are days when the post-missions are frantic and near-violent, all teeth and tongues and grabbing hands, and then there are days when it is slower, unhurried in the languid rut of climax, or even without the final intimacy there is still the reassuring touch of hands and lips, skin-on-skin, warm and present and _there_.

Tonight is a slow night, and rightly so.

"I have a headache," he announces, leaning in on the narrower form, foreheads pressed together.

"I was thinking of rigging the barracks with a water trap."

"That's terrible."

"They dropped a shell on top of us on our first night. These kids will have a much easier time."

Arthur has created a monster, he thinks, as they slide under the covers. Fritz grumbles at the disturbance.

He burrows under and reaches for the other man, with a soft kiss and a hand trailing down, palm flat against abdominal muscles and scar tissue, then lower, teasingly, past the waist band of boxer briefs. Merlin inhales a moan at the first stroke, but catches his wrist and pushes his hand away. 

"Sleep. You're tired. I'll wake you tomorrow."

He smirks at the lewd images of bright eyes and wet lips and his wake-up call between his legs. "Is that a promise?" 

"Mmm." Merlin closes his eyes. "I'll even make breakfast."

He can't help the snort of amusement that escapes him, as they follow each other down into the comforting dark.

"As if." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A big shout out and thanks to everyone who's read and reviewed, and a big thank you again to the OP for this prompt! I had an absolute blast with this, and hope you've all enjoyed it too. :)


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